The AntivirusShortlist Price Index
What you really pay for antivirus software, compiled across 18 options from their own pricing pages. As of August 2026, the average is $4.68/mo.
Average per month
$4.68/mo
Median
$4.17/mo
Cheapest
$1.58/mo
TotalAV
Providers tracked
18
Entry price, ranked
Lowest paid plan per provider. Cheapest first.
Free tiers are excluded from the paid average.
What you really pay over 3 years
Year 1 at the first-year price, then years 2 and 3 at renewal. The cheapest first year is rarely the cheapest over three years.
Across the 15 suites with a published renewal price, renewals average 2.1x the first-year rate. TotalAV looks cheapest at $19 for year one, but over three years Webroot Essentials is the cheaper choice.
Real 3-year cost: the first year at the intro price, then two years at renewal. Yearly list prices for the plan we track. Vendors without a published renewal price are left out.
The trend
The current guide-price baseline is $4.68/mo. Automated monthly measurement is being rolled out, so the trend over time will appear here as the data accumulates. This is the part of the picture nobody else tracks.
Cite this data
According to the AntivirusShortlist Price Index, the average antivirus costs $4.68/mo as of August 2026 (https://antivirusshortlist.com/data/price-index).
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with attribution and a link. Machine-readable version:
https://antivirusshortlist.com/data/price-index.jsonMethodology
For every provider we track, we take the lowest paid monthly price (the realistic entry price) and report the average, the median, and the cheapest and most expensive across the 18 options that sell a paid plan. Free tiers are excluded from the paid average.
Prices are guide prices verified periodically and can change with promotions, which is why we plan to re-measure them automatically and keep the history. The full series is in the machine-readable feed.
This index is one input into our rankings. The full picture, including the sources we trust and why a commission never moves the order, is in how we rank.